ADVERSITY. 
Ill 
salt pork tasted strange at first, and biscuit and potato peel 
were insipid ; but on a raw Glasgow day a hungry gull is 
not disposed to be fastidious. 
So a flourishing colony soon settled about the Clyde 
and shared in all the prosperity of the great city and 
grew fat and lazy. Hard times seemed gone to come 
again no more. But one year trade is slack, and then 
wintry weather sets in sooner than usual, before most of 
the gull families have gone south. And the gull has lived 
from hand to mouth. There is no store laid up, nothing 
saved and no credit to be had. Want comes suddenly, 
and starvation is at its back. And it is the Sabbath 
day in Glasgow. So the fat, Clyde-fed gull, which was 
too lazy to dive for a fish, is lean enough and hungry 
enough to soar up among the clouds for the chance of 
a few insects. 
I will give you another instance. One day on this 
coast I was sailing down one of our loveliest creeks, 
when T saw a mangrove tree almost white with herons. 
Every little branch, or stout twig, every possible foot- 
hold, was occupied. And what do you think they were 
all doing ? The tree was in flower, and they were catch- 
ing the flies which came to the blossoms. What is the 
